Page - 64 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

answer to the question about the admissibility of the veneration of relics and, more broadly, of images. He did so by referring to the Council of Trent, to the twenty-fifth and last session and the decree on the veneration of images, in which the legitimacy of such forms of devotion was reaffirmed.38 Relics such as the shroud of Besançon, Chifflet concluded, could be venerated by virtue of the prototype they represented; such a latria was legitimate because it was devot- ed, through the images, to Christ. ALMOST THE SAME IMAGE – CLOSING REMARKS If images play an eminent role in a system of religious symbols and, more broad- ly, in a system of social communication and if they are carriers of meaning, con- veying values and norms and at the same time forming them, and if they are, as Hans Belting has put it, the “nomads of media”,39 then it is certainly worth- while asking about the specificity of a given set of images and media and their qualities in a given social and historical context. Relic cults such as the one in Besançon were a phenomenon that was as religious as it was political, propa- gandistic and economic. To believers and worshippers, the veil of Veronica, the Mandylion of Edessa or the holy shroud were purposeful “self-reproductions”, mechanical traces, or rather imprints, of Christ’s face and body left by him on pieces of cloth for the benefit of humankind. They were valued and venerated as tangible records of Christ’s historical existence as well as signs of his contin- uing presence in the world.40 In the context of possible proofs of the physical existence of Jesus in the early modern period, scholarly disquisitions about such touch relics played their own singular role, necessarily addressing theological and religious problems. Chifflet’s tract, edited by an internationally esteemed and well-connected publishing house, deserves consideration for both its pro- duction and its circulation as a contribution to and a facet of a particular nar- rative of religion – in this case by an erudite author who was also politically partisan and a practicing Catholic. Narrative choices depend on circumstances and objectives, and images are an important means of conveying information, of eliciting emotion and of af- fecting viewers. As shown, in his selection of illustrations, Chifflet availed him- self of different visual strategies. The large plate directly juxtaposing the two shrouds of Turin and Besançon was at the heart of the tract, intentionally pre- pared with its impact in mind, which was reinforced by both the written argu- 38 De invocatione, veneratione et reliquiis sanctorum, et de sacris imaginibus, 3 December 1563, 25th Session. 39 Belting 2005, 310: “Images resemble nomads in the sense that they take residence in one medium after another.” 40 Belting 1998. 64 | Paola von Wyss-Giacosa www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1